January 25, 2005

Give an Oscar to Michael Moore, Take a Big B.O. Bath

There's a lot of talk and a little bit of surprise snapping about the blogs today over the fact that Michael Moore's 911 failed to be nominated for an Oscar. No mystery to me. I just "follow the money."

Hollywood dodged an big Internet bullet by passing on 911. It had occurred to me months ago, and I am willing to bet that it occurred to others as well, that if 911 got an Oscar, the response from the net and the Blogosphere would have been, "Let's make April the Nobody-Goes-To-The-Movies Month."

And we could have made it happen. And it would have hurt. Big time.

Again, consciously or unconsciously, twisted ideals are fine but in the end Hollywood always votes its pocketbook.

"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper
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Seems more reasonable than the supposed 'back-lash' story.

Posted by: P.A. Breault at January 25, 2005 5:40 PM

I hinted at that Gerard. I'm not as cynical, or
perhaps I'm more naive, but I think sincerity
won out and bullshit lost. That's my hope anyway.

LOL...thats funny. Like bloggers have that much influence, I guess the whole Dan Rather thing has you thinking you are actually running things. Thats so rich. Get a life! Get a date to take to the movies! Get a clue!

Posted by: Bobby at January 25, 2005 7:33 PM

I see you've missed the entire reach of the Web in the last election... money raised.... supporters organized... that sort of thing.

Must have passed you by. Wish you could have operated a computer then. The things you would have seen...

Though you might be right in this case, I'm not convinced that Hollywood always votes its wallet. If they did, there would be much more wholesome, family oriented movies produced. These always out sell the R rated releases and are usually made on a fairly small budget which means huge margins. Instead we get trash on top of garbage on top of sewer with the rare gem tossed in.

Posted by: phil g at January 26, 2005 6:15 AM

Three things:

1) A caller to the Larry Elder show yesterday suggested that since there were no actors in F911 it would have been politically difficult to nominate it for Best Picture. Her boss [an exec at one of the major studios] said the Screen Actors' Guild would have gone crazy if the Academy had nominated F911.

2) The Academy already gave him a best documentary for Bowling for Columbine, and he abused the situation by making an inappropriate, overtly political speech. This year he swung for the fence by taking F911 out of consideration in the documentary category, hoping to get a best picture nomination. It's possible that he would have gotten at least a nomination by leaving it in documentaries, but there were probably a lot of people going, "come on, now."

3) Even Hollywood has noticed that the country is pretty evenly divided over G.W. Bush. It's one thing for individual actors to speak their minds politically, and another for the Academy to appear to take sides.